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The Incredible Value Of Mac App Templates

For any Mac user who has ever labored to create a spreadsheet, or devoted a few hours to a slideshow presentation, or suffered through a page layout app, you know the value of templates. If you’ve never used such a template, there are some built-in to Mail. They’re called Stationery but it’s the same thing.

Apple’s Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps also have templates to help get you started on a project, but clever app developers abound who have put together hundreds of such templates for apps. Through the years I’ve collected more than my fair share of templates for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, but have a decent collection for Apple’s iWork apps, too.

Such templates give you a head start to create a specific use spreadsheet, or slideshow presentation, or page layout– without having to do all the work yourself to create something totally useful. A package I ran into recently had some templates that didn’t match my current collection for iWork so I bit the bullet and bought the Bundle for iWork from the Mac App Store.

For example, Pages isn’t just word processing. Apple tossed in enough page layout options to give you a mini-page layout app. Add the Bundle for iWork to get templates for brochures, business cards, CD/DVD covers, invitations, certificates, and much, much more.

Spreadsheet users know how much time goes into building a spreadsheet from the ground up. How much time can you save with a pre-built template that just needs to be altered to match your specific requirements?

You can see how this works, right? A few thousand templates and graphic elements for a few dozen dollars.

Here’s a few spreadsheet templates but there are hundreds in the bundle.

These templates are broad in nature; some are simple lists and daily tasks, some are business only, some are budgets, others a simple list of wedding to-do items. With more than 300 in the package it’s likely you’ll make up the cost of the bundle after the first or second use.

One of my favorite iWork apps is the popular Keynote. It’s not so much that it can outdo PowerPoint, but it’s easier to use and whatever slideshow you create can also be saved as a movie file and shard online.

Each of these packages in the Bundle is available separately but unless your needs are ultra specific, say just a need for spreadsheets and nothing else, I usually recommend the entire package for Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and graphics. The same app developer has templates and themes for Apple’s iBooks app, Photoshop PSD templates, and one that may be the most valuable of all, a package of resume templates.

Templates are easily selected and opened on the Mac. They’re available on the Mac App Store, but the developer also has some try-before-you-buy free templates so you can see how they work. There’s even a less expensive bundle for iPhone and iPad.

I love templates because they’re such great time savers, and time is money. Nothing to not like here except you may spend a bit of time in the trial and error phase getting a template to match your specific requirements.